Love this commercial for Intel. It displays the capabilities of the 2nd generation i5 processor through rich storytelling of a chase scene; this chase scene is brought to life by multiple tools utilized on the Internet and a desktop. Performance of the story's progression is not affected by the multiple tools that are opened and playing which most multi-taskers can relate to.
"People have carpal tunnel because hardware wasn't designed with humans in mind. The same problem exists with digital interfaces--human elements are often left out of code." (Carolyn Guertin)
Chicago, like one-half of the country, got hit with a major storm earlier this week. This "snowicane" produced 70 miles per hour winds and 25 feet waves hitting the shoreline from Lake Michigan. It also dumped over 20 inches of snow with the wind creating over 6 feet snow drifts. Lasting over 2 days, it produced a snow day for most on the second day. The city owns approximately 300 plows (close to 600 when you include the plow-equipped garbage trucks); yet, travel was nearly impossible on the second day with main artery streets cleared, but all others nearly impassable.
The Chicago Tribune had news to get out regarding the third largest producing blizzard in history, the shut-down and massive car abandonment on Lake Shore Drive, and even non-blizzard related news. Yet, the snow-filled roads made delivering the physical newspaper to stands, boxes, and homes impossible. It announced that for the first-time ever that it would post today's edition of the paper online for free. (You can view it here: http://eedition.chicagotribune.com/Olive/ODE/ChicagoTribune/)
The Chicago Tribune does post much of its news online; it has a prominent website. This was a unique situation because for the first time everyone was exposed to how the newspaper appears on an eReader (iPad, etc.). Dyed-in-the-wool hard copy subscribers could not help but to experience what an online subscription feels like. If anything, it shows the hesitators that the physical newspaper experience is similar to the eReader experience (note, I am not stating exactly like). It also made the Chicago Tribune that more relevant to the younger generation which has withdrawn from reading newspapers.
It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on online newspaper subscriptions. But, this certainly is a big win for the online newspaper formula; it delivered on a day when even the U.S. Postal Service ("neither snow nor rain...") could not.
In 2010, I posted that companies must make mobile websites a necessity.
I cited four main reasons in a previous post (http://consumerologist.posterous.com/no-longer-an-option-mobile-websites):>
I believe that these four reasons are still relevant—actually more so now. There are more reasons to revisit this.
Mobile has evolved our perception and behavior. It has altered our decision-making paths. Smartphones are providing instant access to the Internet for many. Adolescents are coming of age in a world where the Internet has always been at their fingertips…anytime they needed or wanted it. We truly live in an always-on society.
If mobile websites and applications are becoming a consumer’s/user’s first access wave to your web presence…then why aren’t companies still treating it as such?
You are at a store about to purchase a new bike (maybe new dishes, a new TV, etc.). You notice on a comparable model a symbol...one that lets you know what energy supply source was used in the manufacture of the product. Does this change your decision of what model or brand to purchase? Would you find this important to know? Is it a right to know? Does this logo create "purchaser empowerment"? Or does it add confusion?
WindMade believes it can have an effect. By introducing a new logo (see the top of this post for the new logo), it strives to have a consumer pull impact; consumers will become more informed in the energy used to create products, they will look for the logo, and demand that more products carry the logo (thus, be made by wind-powered energy vs. non-renewable energy sources).
The impact will be felt in purchasing behavior. However, the general public and consumers must first be informed of the logo; more importantly educated about the "what's in it for me?" or "why should I care?" elements of wind power.
My mind goes to other broad-base issue campaigns. Some successful, some not. Here are a few to ponder: "Made in America", LEED Building certifications, anti-littering, and anti-smoking campaigns. How would you position this campaign? Will the logo change the general buyer populations' perspective?
Starbucks has presented its new logo this month which will be phased in later this year. The modified logo is meant to display the company's move into other products and services in addition to its core coffee offering. 
The logo is an updated look of its mermaid symbol. Missing is its traditional tri-color scheme, border, and most prominent to the eye, the words: Starbucks Coffee.
Gap faced a deluge of protests when it tried to change its brand logo last autumn. Yet, Pepsi seems to be able to evolve its logo continuously throughout the years as its seeks to remain modern and relevant; to little or no fanfare or notice nor uproars from its community.
As Starbucks seeks to extend its offerings, a few general questions arise that any company should ponder as its changes an embraced community symbol:
Retailer, Target, gets even more smartphone savvy
Nielsen now estimates that one-half of Americans will possess a smartphone by the end of 2011. Target has embraced the tool and technology releasing a series of functional applications for its shoppers. It has followed this up with a mobile gift giving announcement. One can now purchase a Target gift card and immediately notify the recipient via her smartphone. The recipient is given a surprise or a nice event as they go about their normal routine day. Better yet, she can also utilize the card with her smartphone as the bar code is supplied with the message.
The giver will also receive notice when the recipient has opened the message which provides assurance to the buyer in their "evaluation" phase of the purchase cycle.
Beloit College publishes its Mindset List every year. What is this, you wonder? It provides perspective to the 18 year old entering college freshman's world. It tells you what they have always known to be true, exist or be of thought; it also tells you products or version they have never known nor use as a frame of reference. I love this list. I wait for it every year. It is enriching information to utilize as you begin to understand their minds--their outlooks, perspectives and crucial milestones that have shaped them.
Beloit College is located in Beloit, WI. Authored by: Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief. The official Mindset List website is located at:http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/index.php Though I have provided it below:
Beloit College Mindset List for the entering college class of 2014
Beloit, Wis. – Born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage, members of this fall’s entering college class of 2014 have emerged as a post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and technology is just too slow.
Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually.
The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.
Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older.
The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014
Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”
4. Al Gore has always been animated.
5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.
6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.
8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.
9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.
11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.
14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.
15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.
16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.
17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.
18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.
21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.
22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.
23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.
24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording.
25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.
26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.
30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows.
31. The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum.
32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.
34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always been an alternative to hospitals.
35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.
36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.
37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”
38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.
40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.
41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.
42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.
43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.
44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.
45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college.
46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.
48. Someone has always gotten married in space.
49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States.
50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.
51. Food has always been irradiated.
52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.
53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?
54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy.
55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.
56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street.
57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife.
58. Beethoven has always been a dog.
59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab Clear, it was gone.
60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48.
61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else.
62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.
63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.
64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.
67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.
68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.
69. The Post Office has always been going broke.
70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.
71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.
72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.
73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated.
74. They’ve always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi Channel.
75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis.
